Wake Forest Magazine, March 2007 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

C O N S T A N T & T R U EThe little school that didBy Dave JosephSouth Florida Sun-SentinelPPOSITE WORLD IS COOL.OThat’s what we learned hereTuesday night at the FedEx OrangeBowl. In a game featuring a schoolno one ever expected to be in a BCSgame and in a game many thoughtwould be tedious because it had nonational championship implicationsor pre-game hype—tiny Wake Forestgave Louisville’s emerging programand an announced crowd of 74,470a memorable game.How refreshing. Suddenly, aBCS game didn’t have to be lifeand-deathto be appealing. It didn’thave to come down to a coach’sjob on the line. It didn’t have tofeature behemoths like Florida Stateor Miami. It could star a small,tie-dyed school from Winston-Salem,North Carolina.Yes, the favored Cardinals won,scoring 14 fourth-quarter pointsto beat the Demon Deacons 24–13.But how could you not come awayfrom this game enamored by theDemon Deacons? Wake Forest. Thelittle engine that could…I think Ican…I think I can…How could younot like a school of 6,700 students,only 4,300 undergraduates, stuffingit to those ACC giants like FloridaState? How could you not like thesmallest school ever to compete ina BCS game?These things don’t happen anymorein big-time college football.Heck, even “little” Boise State hasC O N S T A N T& T R U E18,000 students, Louisville 25,000.Demon Deacons coach Jim Grobehad to put a team together withlocal kids who weren’t highlyrecruited or necessarily motivatedby the size of a school’s stadiumor, ironically, its chance of playingin a BCS game.Wake Forest. In a BCS game.Only in opposite world.Think about it: If every currentundergraduate and graduate studentat Wake Forest attended Tuesday’sgame, Dolphin Stadium wouldhave mirrored a Tuesday afternoongame in August between the Marlinsand Nationals. Heck, if every livingWake Forest graduate attendedthe Orange Bowl, there wouldhave still been 20,000 empty seatsTuesday night.But here were the DemonDeacons playing in a BCS gamein front of probably the largestgathering of Wake Forest alumniin school history. Black and gold,tie-dyed crazies from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The kind ofstudents who celebrate school victoriesby covering the center ofcampus with toilet paper. EveryDeadhead should adopt this school.Jerry Garcia meets Mr. Whipple.The smallest school and coolest.And a team that refused to believeit couldn’t succeed.This was the culmination for theDemon Deacons of an improbableyear, one that could have been lostback in September when they managedto block a last-second field goalattempt to beat lowly Duke. Despitelosses to Clemson and Virginia Tech,the Demon Deacons never wentaway. They beat Georgia Tech andFlorida State and Maryland on theroad. And they did it all after losingtheir starting quarterback, runningback and left tackle.And now this.After going down 10–3 afterLouisville stole a play from theirplaybook by scoring on a modifiedflea flicker, Cinderella got mad.Wake Forest tied the game on a30-yard touchdown to Nate Mortonfrom Riley Skinner, formerly theDeacons’ third-string quarterback.Then they took the lead in thefourth quarter on a 36-yard fieldgoal by Sam Swank. But they fumbleddeep inside Cardinals territorytwice, and they couldn’t stop theNo. 5-ranked Cardinals in the fourthquarter. Suddenly, the magic hadrun out. Midnight had approached.It was too bad, really.Back to the real world.This column appeared in the SouthFlorida Sun-Sentinel on January 3,2007, and is reprinted with permission.48 WAKE FOREST MAGAZINE